I was looking around at some of the blogs/newsletters I frequent (see the March 20th entry) and found myself at The Thinking Mother reading her "Annoyed by Poor Service With Amazon Marketplace Sellers" article. Now even though I've been writing something off and on for a year or so on our own site, White Unicorn Books Ramblings, this is about the first time I've commented on an article on another blog. I had to go through the process of creating this blog before my comment would be published. Even then, since I really knew nothing about this, I didn't fill in any of the blanks (who I was, etc.). I assume that is why my comment didn't get posted. Since I had to finally figure this thing out, at least partially, in order to maybe comment on some other blog articles, I though I would just publish my comment here. So here it is.

Hi,

I'm sorry about your bad experiences with book buying. However one of the thing you might do is try to find out more about the seller. I know this is difficult sometimes but there are several organizations which you can check to see if the seller is a member. If the seller is a member of one of these organizations, there is a very good chance your experience will be a much happier one. One (Tom Folio) was mentioned in a comment above. Another is the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA.org). IOBA members must abide by a code of ethics which are posted on site and describe their books (guide lines are also posted on site). Many of the IOBA dealers, including us, have a "return for any reason" policy, sometimes with postage also reimbursed. They must accept full responsibility (refunds including postage both ways) for any items not as described and are responsible for the book until it actually gets to the customer (but they still can't control shipping time other than in the general standard or expedited mail sense). Although they do not have nearly the inventory of Amazon or Ebay, you might check out their site for IOBA member booksellers, IOBAbooks.com.

About the shipping and handling (S&H) on Amazon. Buyers are charged $3.49 for standard shipping and handling (S&H). It used to be that seller got $2.26 of that. Fees to the seller are 15% of the sale price of the book and either a monthly fee ($39.99) as a Pro Merchant or a flat fee of $0.99 per item sold. So the seller made a little money on some items and lost some on others. Overall our bookstore maybe lost a little or made a little on standard S&H considering packaging material which might be as simple as the film wrapped paperback in a padded envelope or a more complicated bubble wraped hardcover inside a taped "ziplock", taped at the corners to prevent bumped corners with addition styrofoam and peanut cushioning in the taped box. BTW: All of our DJ's have If any kind of reasonable labor rate were added, we definately would loose money. Since we are a small "Mom & Pop" store, the labor rate doesn't come into effect.

Then the US Postal rates went up this year. Amazon, possibly in its consideration of the law on the matter, started giving the seller the total $3.49 S&H charge it was charging the customer. Since the postage rates did not raise near as much as the additional $1.23 the sellers were receiving, the sellers really made out. Right? Wrong! Because Amazon added a $1.23 per sold fee to the sellers cost of doing business on Amazon? Since costs to the seller have risen about 10% due to the postal rate increase, we are losing more money on the S&H than we did before.